“When I was a very young girl in the 1960’s I watched a murder mystery. In the show there was a child, a girl I think, who everyone thinks witnessed the murder of her mother (?), not sure about it. Time goes on and no one is accused of the murder. The break in the case comes with the child sees a shadow of a woman in a hat and she realizes that she had seen that shadow on the night of the murder. In my young mind this last part was very intense. Strangely, I cannot seem to locate this film in my google searches. The memory has lurked my whole life, I’d sure appreciate any help you could give me!”

Well, Faith, we’ve been wracking our brains, and the only film we can think of which has a similar plot is the 1950 Ann Sothern film, Shadow on the Wall. It stars Sothern, Zachary Scott and Gigi Perreau, and features Nancy Davis, the future Mrs. Ronald Reagan. Check it out. It’s one of the small films from the big studio, MGM.

If the movie you’re thinking of isn’t this one, then it’s a rip off of this very clever plot.

By the way, your question reminds us of one of Hollywood’s unheralded child stars — Gigi Perreau. Born in 1941 (making her 75 today), Gigi, the product of a French father an American mother, was a topline personality in the 1950’s.

She began her career with an uncredited appearance as an infant in 1943’s Madame Curie, perhaps the youngest film debut ever. In 1956 alone she was versatile enough to appear with Gregory Peck in TheMan in the Gray Flannel Suit, and with Abbott and Costello in Dance With me, Henry.

The bulk of her recent career has been spent almost exclusively in television. But she was a distinct presence as a budding child movie star in the Fifties. In 1998 Perreau was presented with the Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award.